Mango Prices Climb As Supplies Dry Up In Kenyan Markets

Mango lovers across Kenya are digging deeper into their pockets this season. Traders in several urban markets say supplies have thinned out noticeably, pushing prices upward just as demand for the fruit remains steady.

The pinch is being felt hardest in towns that rely on mangoes trucked in from the country’s main growing belts.

Vendors point to poor rainfall at key stages of the growing season as the culprit, when rains fail during flowering and fruit-set, trees simply don’t fill out the way farmers need them to. The result: smaller harvests and fewer mangoes making it to market stalls.

It’s a strange twist given Kenya’s standing as one of the region’s bigger mango producers. FAOSTAT figures put the country’s 2024 output at roughly 783,000 tonnes, with about 25,039 tonnes shipped abroad. Clearly, production on paper doesn’t always translate into steady shelves.

Walk through a handful of Kenyan markets right now, and you’ll find wildly different price tags on what is, technically, the same fruit.

In Nairobi, ordinary local mangoes are going for around KSh25 a kilo, while the more prized Ngowe variety fetches closer to KSh55. Head west to Eldoret’s West Market and local mangoes are a bit cheaper, at about KSh20 a kilo. Mombasa, meanwhile, has some of the lowest prices recorded, around KSh13 per kilo.

Kibuye Market in Kisumu has recorded prices as steep as KSh150 a kilo, a sharp contrast to Wundanyi in Taita-Taveta, where mangoes are moving at roughly KSh50, and Sabatia in Kakamega, sitting at around KSh100.

Prices shift depending on variety, quality, the season, and whether you’re buying wholesale or retail.

What explains such a gap between towns barely a few hours’ drive apart? A mix of things, really: how much supply is coming through, which variety is on offer, the quality of the fruit, and how far it’s had to travel to reach the seller. Transport costs alone can make a real dent in the final price tag.

If there’s one thing this moment illustrates, it’s just how unpredictable Kenya’s mango supply chain can be. One county’s harvest can be piling up in gluts while, at the very same time, another is running dangerously short.

Murang’a County offered a textbook example of this earlier in the year. Good weather there triggered heavy flowering and fruiting, leading to a glut so large that farmers struggled to sell everything before it spoiled. Fast forward a few months, and now other regions are facing the opposite problem entirely.

For everyday consumers, tighter supply in mango-dependent towns generally means one thing: higher prices at the stall. Farmers and traders in the affected areas, on the other hand, may actually come out ahead, since scarcity tends to push up what they can charge.

Beneath the day-to-day price swings lies a more structural issue: Kenya still lacks the storage, processing and market-linkage infrastructure needed to smooth out these boom-and-bust cycles.

Better cold storage and processing options could help absorb gluts like the one Murang’a experienced, rather than letting excess fruit go to waste while other markets go hungry for supply.

Mangoes remain a vital income source for thousands of smallholder farmers around the country. Strengthening the links between growing regions and the markets that depend on them wouldn’t just steady prices for shoppers; it could also give farmers a more reliable return on a crop that, right now, seems to swing wildly between feast and famine.

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